Noticing Things
by my-last-username-was-immature
Summary: The first thing Frank Zhang noticed about Hazel Levesque was her hair-it was bright, and very curly, and he wanted to run his hands through it like nothing he had ever wanted before in his life. Then he started noticing other things...like the way her eyes closed when she laughed, or how her ears twitched when she smiled. Like the way he felt when he looked at her. One-shot. Fluff.
The first thing Frank noticed about her was her hair-and he knew that shouldn't be what he was thinking about, when he'd just been pledged a place in an army of Roman…demigods?...all of whom were staring at him, probably wondering why he was blushing like an idiot, or (hopefully not) laughing about the fact that he was very obviously staring at the tiny girl in the corner of the lines of people, which was not a very warrior-like thing to do, (could they kick him out for that? Just general non-warriorness? If anyone was going to be kicked out for that, it was Frank.) And later, looking back, he would wonder why it was her _hair_ that caught his attention, not the beautiful gold eyes that were like nothing he had ever seen before or the slight smile he could tell she was swallowing back as Reyna yelled commands at him that he definitely wasn't hearing, regardless of how mediocrely his legs seemed to be obeying them. But he couldn't help it-staring at it until he was in the ranks of whatever group (Cabin? Company? Cupcake? He was pretty sure it started with a "c"…) he'd just been assigned to, and then sneaking glances back towards her, and that gracefully tangled hair, tripping over his own feet a couple of times because he was so busy watching it dance around her head. It caught his eyes and refused to let go-inexplicably, he _really_ wanted to just go over and run his hands through it. He wondered if he would be able to, or if his fingers would just get tangled in the thick little spirals of curls. He wondered what it would feel like beneath his fingers-he could only ever remember touching his mother's hair-and that was when he was little, three or four, tangling his tiny toddler's hands in it because he didn't know any better-and this girl's hair looked like a totally different species from his mother's straight black hair. The color…it was like cinnamon, dark brownish-red, but as it swept through the sunlight, he could see different color in each strand, metallic and bright, like it had been woven out of wires, almost…bronze, gold both new and tarnished, brilliant coppery colors that flashed out at him for a few seconds and then disappeared…And it was curly, wound so tightly around her face that it looked like they were going to leap up and take off running any second. He couldn't imagine what it would feel like to touch it-well, no, he could, and he did, over and over again, imagined it like silk, like the feathers of a bird fluttering and breathing under his hand, like a warm river of metal slipping through his fingers, but he knew it wouldn't feel like any of that, and that just made him want to touch it more…
He spent the first week in the Fifth Cohort, (some crazy kid with Kool-Aid stains alarmingly red around his lips had finally told him what it was called, although now Frank was stuck trying to remember that guy's official title, which also started with a "c"), tripping over weapons and other people, and staring at that hair, sneaking glimpses out of the corner of his eyes when he couldn't openly stare-which could've had something to do with the number of times he tripped over things. (He ran into an elephant once when he was staring at her, which you definitely think he would've avoided if he'd been watching where he was going. Elephants are hard to miss.)  
Then he started noticing other things about her. Like her eyes-wide, set the perfect distance apart from each other over her nose, with thick black lashes that fanned out around them like stars, intensely, brilliantly gold. He spent an entire day composing poetry in his head about that color, regardless of the fact that he could hear his grandmother's voice berating him for even attempting to write poetry the whole time he was doing it. ("Clumsy fool! You can barely talk without stuttering. Why would you think you can write poems?!") It wasn't what you thought when you heard gold eyes-that was the way people described the titans that had risen up a while back, so intensely golden, so bright that it hurt to look at them. No, her eyes were softer, darker gold, the kind that looked warmer, almost like the gold in them had melted and then cooled just the slightest bit. You could look at those eyes all day-or Frank could, at least. (He had tripped over a crate full of weasels staring at her. Another thing that you would've thought he would've avoided if he was aware of where he was. And no, he still didn't know why there had been a crate of weasels outside the Senate House.)  
Eventually, though, his gaze stopped catching on her hair, her eyes-they were still the first thing he saw, and enough to make his throat dry with the desire to make something beautiful to honor them, but now he could look past them too, and start noticing the little things. Like her smile-she had beautifully full lips, curved just right, and when she smiled he wondered why she ever stopped-and the way that her ears twitched when she grinned a little, her nose crumpling the tiniest bit at the top when she really smiled, so hard that it looked like her face was going to split. The way her skin looked under sunlight, the kind of warm brown that almost made it seem like the light was rippling over it, like it was liquid and alive. How she tugged at her hair when she was thinking-there was one curl just on the left side of her face, (the side where her cheekbone was just the slightest bit more defined), that she would reach up and twirl around her finger whenever someone asked her to strategize, or speak Latin, and Frank loved watching it spiral, and then spring free, back into the wild tangle of her curls, when she figured out what she wanted to say. The way she looked when she blushed-with that tiny uncertain smile, almost unconscious, accompanying the flush on her cheeks-and how she always reached up with one hand to fan her face when she was embarrassed, like she could smell whatever inappropriate thing the other person had said. How she laughed-her eyelids fluttered down, so he could barely see the curve of her irises through them, her left eye just the slightest bit closer to being closed than her right. The gentle grace of her hands, tossing off quick, uncertain gestures as she spoke, dancing purposefully, gracefully, through whatever task she set her mind to, with a certainty that amazed Frank. When she fought, she wasn't perfect-she'd complained to him so many times, once he started talking to her, that she would be so much better if she could just find a horse, and he could believe it, watching the frustration build in her eyes and her sharp movements as she whirled around and around with a cavalry sword-but he still loved watching her, because she spun as she fought, bouncing on the balls of her feet like she knew she could do better, like she was impatient to figure out a way to show them _how_ , and it was impossible to ignore that. (He fell into the Tiber once, watching her spar, because he literally could not look away, and most of the camp was firmly of the opinion that he was completely useless at team war games.) He spent an entire day once just watching the way she bit her lip when she was frustrated-she would bite down on just one side of her bottom lip, pull it inwards, and then roll both her lips in and out like she was exhaling away the tension. (That was the day he knocked over the entire rack of armor he was supposed to be polishing, watching her re-feather arrows across the armory.)  
Sometimes, he wondered if the only reason he was so bad at everything they did at the camp was because his head was so full of _her_. He had learned archery before he met her, and his fingers still remembered the way that worked-it barely even required conscious thought by now. But maybe so much of his time here was spent staring at her, cataloging every expression until he felt like he could read her face better than his own, that he couldn't learn anything else-his head was so full of curls and long fingers that tapped against gold cavalry swords, wide smiles and golden eyes, that there was no room left for the proper way to throw a javelin, or the Latin name for a wind coming from the southeast. (Sometimes, when Reyna was yelling at him, he was severely tempted to try that excuse. _Sorry, praetor. My head's just very, very full of Hazel Levesque._ Then he remembered how well that would go over.) Sometimes he wondered if he even wanted to be this attracted to her, if those smiles were even worth it if they were just going to turn him into an idiot for the rest of the day. Then she would walk past and smile again, or crack one of the terrible jokes that they came up with together, (because she would laugh at the stupidest knock-knock jokes Frank knew, and he laughed harder at over-the-top bad jokes than good ones anyway), and he felt like he was breathing in sunlight, and he remembered- _oh yeah. That's why._  
Because Hazel Levesque was beautiful. Because she never gave up on an idea once she got it into her head. Because she knew some of the worst puns he'd ever heard. Because she was kind to everyone-even the old _Lares_ , and the fauns that followed her around asking for change. (Even the galumphing idiot who'd accidentally tripped and knocked her down the first time they had guard duty together.) Because she defended her brother so fiercely whenever someone said something about how Goth he was, or how he spent so much time in the Underworld that he was practically a ghost himself-even though the boy barely visited, and barely said anything to her when he did. Because she laughed longer and harder at his jokes than anyone had before. Because sometimes, when she didn't think anyone was watching, she looked tremendously sad and lonely, and Frank wished there was something he could do about that. Because she was Hazel Levesque, and she was the brightest, liveliest person in the camp, and since the moment Frank had seen that curly hair, his center of gravity had shifted, and he was in love.

 **A/N: There is not enough Frazel appreciation in this fandom. Seriously. Not even in the canon. They are just...the cutest couple. Ever. Literally. I don't know why I've been thinking about them so much recently, but I have kind of fallen in love with them, because oh my gods, Frank is just adorable and really dorky, and Hazel just puts up with it so well, and they are both the most amazing characters ever-and I feel like they get ignored a lot, because they're not main characters, and...This is my solution. Expect more Frazel, just because.**


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